Down­town is inter­est­ing. For the most part Euclid Avenue is rem­i­nis­cent of an empty tomb, just about every building-​front is empty and dirty, with trash col­lect­ing where the wind blows it. There is also a con­stant of home­less peo­ple, they’ve each got their own ter­ri­to­r­ial cor­ner and they tend to place them­selves right where it is least pos­si­ble to avoid them, say for exam­ple, right where a side­walk becomes con­stricted so that only one per­son can walk down it at a time. I’m start­ing to get city-​blind to them, there are only so many times you can buy them donuts and have them ask you for money instead, so many times you can give them some change, so many times of hear­ing their daily hus­tle before you get inured to it. At last count I walk by the same six pan­han­dlers every day on my way to work, and in a down­town as empty as Cleveland’s is, they don’t blend in with crowds very easily.

I don’t like that this is hap­pen­ing to me, but it is obvi­ous that what I try to do to help isn’t mak­ing any dif­fer­ence in their lives, and that they aren’t really grate­ful for it when I do try. Home­less folks in Canada are a dif­fer­ent breed alto­gether. They thank you even if you don’t give ‘em change. It is sad but true, as Niet­zsche said:

Beg­gars should be entirely abol­ished! Truly, it is annoy­ing to give to them and annoy­ing not to give to them.

There are two places I really like to get my lunch, both have terse ser­vice, unas­sum­ing atmos­pheres, and good food in good por­tions for not much money. The first is Juji’s in the Statler Arms. I can get a three-​egg omelet, a bunch of home fries, and toast for $5.50 and the best part is that I can order it as I leave the gym and pick it up when I walk by. A burger and fries is also some­thing like $5.25 and they’re made fresh. The place is owned by a Lebanese guy, but the man­ager is a tough tat­tooed Ital­ian from NYC and I crack up on a reg­u­lar basis deal­ing with him and his crew because they’re so mouthy to each other. Since I go there fairly reg­u­larly, they’re start­ing to mouth off to me now too, which is great.

The other place is the New Yorker Deli. One of my cowork­ers calls it Con­vict Café because of the crowd that you’ll find there. This is another place run by a guy from NYC and it is just down the street from Juji’s. Their motto is “Where Qual­ity Tastes Deli­cious” but it should be “$6 of meat of a $5 sand­wich”. Their corned beef and pas­trami sand­wiches are excel­lent, and I’m pretty sure they make their own pickles.

Hav­ing a monthly RTA pass might be pay­ing off finally, I get $1 off any ticket to any show at the Cleve­land Film Fes­ti­val if I show my pass at the box office.